And so
will he stand in history the justest of men, a man of highest purity of
purpose and of greatest practical wisdom; but, if as a mountain, then as
one that hides somewhere in its slopes such a path as we have learned to
know in our journeys over this course, a portage path between two great
valleys which its summit has blessed, for he was as a portage path between
the eastern and western waters, between the institutions of New England
and the fleur-de-lis fields of Nouvelle France.
I have visited the unmarked field where Fort Le Boeuf once stood, by
French Creek, the field where "the most momentous and far-reaching
question ever brought to issue on this [American] continent" [Footnote:
Parkman, "Montcalm and Wolfe," 1:4.] was put by the stripling Washington
to the veteran Legardeur de St. Pierre.
I have, in my worship of the great general, followed through the rain and
sleet of a winter's night and in the mud of a country road his famous
march from the crossing of the Delaware to Trenton, made in that December
night of 1776 when the struggle seemed most hopeless.
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